When Data Centers Become the Neighbors Nobody Wants: The Resource Conflict Reshaping Local Politics

AURORA, COLORADO — When Tara Miller and her husband moved into their new home in The Reserve community, they believed they had finally found the ideal place to retire. Less than two months later, Miller learned that a data center spanning nearly 900,000 square feet could be built next to the neighborhood.

"I was shocked. We were never told about it," she said.

Miller's frustration is far from unique.

From Virginia's so-called "data center corridor" to rural Georgia, from farmland communities in Ohio to Melbourne's western suburbs, opposition to large-scale data centers is spreading rapidly. According to Data Center Watch, global opposition to data center projects has more than doubled since 2024. In the United States alone, projects worth an estimated $130 billion have reportedly been delayed or canceled because of local resistance.

A Heatmap News poll found that roughly 75% of Americans now oppose having a data center built near where they live, compared with 42% a year earlier.

This is no longer simply a traditional case of NIMBYism — "not in my backyard."

It is becoming a broader conflict over land, electricity, water and the public's right to participate in decisions that reshape their communities. Local governments, technology companies and residents increasingly find themselves on the same battlefield, but speaking entirely different languages.

"We Haven't Even Made Our First Mortgage Payment"

The experience of Aurora residents highlights a structural problem: when data centers are approved "by right" on industrial land, nearby residents may have little or no formal opportunity to object.

Aurora City Council member Amy Wiles explained that the area where Project Trident is proposed is zoned for industrial use, where data centers are considered a permitted use. As a result, the project can move through an administrative approval process without a community hearing or review by the planning commission.

By the time residents learn about the project, much of the approval process may already be underway.

"We moved in on August 10. We haven't even made our first mortgage payment," said Laura Belcher, a resident of the Windler community. "We planned to live there for a long time. Now we have to figure out what it is going to be like living next to a massive data center."

Denver City Council member Stacie Gilmore, who represents residents in Green Valley Ranch, has also expressed concern about the lack of communication between the two cities.

Her concerns extend beyond property values.

"If a data center catches fire, what happens?" she asked. "We don't even know whether the fire department can put it out, or whether that would be Aurora's responsibility, Denver's responsibility, or whether other jurisdictions would need to help."

Jeff Peshut, director of the real estate program at MSU Denver, points to a broader regulatory problem.

Many existing land-use regulations were written before hyperscale data centers became common.

"The law is trying to catch up with the technology," he said.

That gap helps explain why a growing number of cities and counties are considering temporary moratoriums, zoning changes or outright restrictions on new data center development.

Electricity and Water: The Burden-Shifting Problem

The resource footprint of data centers is not limited to electricity.

A study by University College London highlights a critical trade-off between evaporative cooling and closed-loop air cooling.

Evaporative cooling can consume significant quantities of water locally while requiring less electricity. Air cooling can reduce direct water consumption but requires more electricity, potentially increasing the water consumption and carbon emissions associated with power generation elsewhere on the grid.

In other words, reducing one resource burden can shift the burden to another part of the system.

The distinction becomes particularly important as data centers grow larger and more energy-intensive.

In Georgia's Effingham County, OpenAI's proposed Project Camellia illustrates the scale of the challenge. The project is expected to require as much as 3.2 gigawatts of electricity — roughly enough to supply 2 million homes and several times the electricity demand of Atlanta at any given moment.

OpenAI has said the project will use closed-loop water systems to reduce direct water consumption. But as the UCL research suggests, reducing water use can increase electricity requirements.

According to Inside Climate News, the Georgia Public Service Commission has approved nearly 10 gigawatts of additional generation capacity, with approximately 80% expected to serve data centers. More than half of the additional generation is expected to come from natural gas, potentially producing more than 20 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions annually.

Ohio offers another illustration of the economic trade-off.

State tax records indicate that Ohio gave up more than $2 billion in revenue during 2024 and 2025 through sales-tax incentives for data centers, benefiting companies including Amazon and Meta.

At the same time, residents in Defiance reported electricity-rate increases of approximately 10% to 15% year over year in June.

The debate is therefore shifting from a simple question of whether data centers consume resources to a more difficult one:

Who ultimately pays for those resources?

From Local Disputes to a 2026 Election Issue

By 2026, data centers had moved well beyond local zoning disputes and into the broader political debate surrounding the U.S. midterm elections.

What makes the issue particularly unusual is that opposition does not fit neatly into traditional partisan categories.

Polling in Virginia illustrates the shift.

In 2023, approximately 69% of Virginia voters said they were willing to accept new data centers in their communities. By March 2026, that figure had fallen to 35%.

Support for eliminating data center tax incentives also increased sharply, with approximately 67% of voters supporting the removal of such incentives.

The change cuts across ideological lines.

In Leesburg, Virginia, 64-year-old government worker Mark Lauzier describes himself as a Christian conservative. Seventy-eight-year-old Charlottesville retiree Sylvia Whitt describes herself as a liberal.

Yet both express similar concerns about data center development.

"This is crazy," Lauzier said, arguing that the projects are driven by financial incentives while reducing local quality of life.

In Ohio's Defiance County, residents have taken their concerns directly to the ballot. Even though no company has formally announced plans to build a data center there, local organizers gathered enough signatures to place a November 3 referendum on the ballot that would prohibit most new data centers except the smallest facilities.

A Bowling Green State University poll found that 71% of Ohio residents supported a pause on new data center construction.

The issue has also reached Washington.

The House passed legislation by an overwhelming 417–3 vote requiring states to consider making large data centers responsible for the full incremental cost of their electricity consumption, including upgrades to generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure.

The Senate's next steps remain uncertain.

The debate has also drawn direct intervention from President Donald Trump, who has criticized opponents of data centers and argued that some of the opposition reflects narratives similar to earlier warnings about climate change. He has also alleged that Chinese influence operations are amplifying opposition to data center development.

Residents in Loudoun County, Virginia, dispute that characterization. Their concerns are much more immediate: persistent noise from facilities roughly 150 meters away, along with the operation of natural-gas turbines and diesel generators when grid capacity is insufficient.

For these residents, the debate is less about geopolitics than about what it means to live next to industrial-scale computing infrastructure.

Georgia Becomes a Legal Battleground

In Effingham County, the conflict has escalated into a legal battle over procedural transparency and public participation.

OpenAI's proposed Project Camellia covers approximately 1,440 acres, making it one of the largest data center developments proposed in Georgia.

Its approval process has attracted significant controversy.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, representing local residents and environmental organization One Hundred Miles, filed a lawsuit alleging that the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority failed to provide the legally required seven days' public notice before a July meeting.

The lawsuit also alleges that the project appeared on the agenda under the name "Project Gateway" without identifying OpenAI or the proposed tax incentives, and that the proposed sale of public land to OpenAI was not adequately discussed in an open meeting.

The controversy intensified after comments from Eric Johnson, a former president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate and a 2010 gubernatorial candidate.

Speaking to Georgia Public Broadcasting, Johnson reportedly said that if the project were presented to the public, residents would say "no data centers" based on misinformation.

Attorneys for the Southern Environmental Law Center cited the comment in their lawsuit as evidence of what they characterized as a serious disregard for Georgia's transparency requirements.

A second lawsuit, filed by three residents, challenges changes to the county's zoning regulations that allegedly allowed data centers to be developed without the legally required public hearing.

Residents have raised concerns about the project's proximity to schools and residential communities, water consumption for cooling, nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions from backup diesel generators, and the potential need for more than 3 gigawatts of electricity to serve the project.

The underlying concern is straightforward:

The community wants a meaningful role in decisions that could permanently alter its environment and infrastructure.

A Global Pattern

The debate is not confined to the United States.

Malaysia's Kota Damansara offers an important example.

In July 2026, a proposed data center near residential areas and schools reportedly attracted approximately 290 formal objections, after which the developer withdrew its planning application.

Ramanan, the local Member of Parliament, said he was not opposed to development or investment but argued that residents should have an opportunity to express their views when major projects could significantly affect their lives.

In Melbourne's western suburbs, Australia, a NextDC data center is reportedly located only 15 meters from nearby homes.

The community group Citizens for Tottenham has called for compensation measures for approximately 2,500 residents living within 500 meters of the facility, including voluntary buybacks, stamp-duty and relocation assistance, and annual compensation for loss of amenity.

The Victorian government subsequently announced a 150-meter buffer-zone requirement and renewable-energy conditions. However, those rules do not apply to projects that had already been approved or were already under assessment.

Malaysia's Johor state has taken a different approach, moving toward tighter regulation before some projects reach the construction stage.

The state has paused approvals for Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centers and required greater disclosure of electricity sources, water supply and cooling arrangements during the approval process.

Natural Resources Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad has said technology companies will face higher costs for water and energy resources. Johor reportedly rejected approximately 30% of data center applications in 2024 because of resource constraints.

The examples differ in their legal systems and regulatory approaches, but the underlying issue is remarkably similar:

Data center expansion is increasingly colliding with local resource limits.

The Real Conflict: Who Pays?

Forrester's September 2026 forecast captures the emerging tension in a simple phrase: "unlimited AI ambitions" will confront limited resources.

At the heart of the conflict is a fundamental imbalance:

The benefits and costs of data centers are often separated geographically.

The economic benefits of AI infrastructure flow to technology companies, shareholders, cloud-service customers and policymakers who view AI competitiveness as strategically important.

The costs, however, can be concentrated within a few miles of the facility.

Residents may face higher electricity bills, increased water consumption, industrial noise, diesel emissions, pressure on local infrastructure and concerns about property values and quality of life.

Sylvia Whitt summarized the tension this way:

"I like the internet, just like anybody else. But we need to put the internet on a diet. We don't need to pay for companies' internet businesses."

That tension raises a question far more fundamental than whether a particular data center should be approved:

When the physical infrastructure behind a technology begins to reshape the living conditions of a community, who has the right to say no? At what stage? And on what grounds?

From Aurora, where residents argue that administrative approvals can occur with limited community involvement, to Effingham County, where lawsuits are challenging alleged violations of public-notice requirements, to Melbourne, where residents are seeking compensation and buffer zones, seemingly isolated disputes are beginning to form a broader pattern.

The issue is increasingly becoming one of governance.

From Project-Level Opposition to Rule Changes

Forrester has predicted that by 2027, two countries will impose energy tariffs on data center operators and that community-impact reviews will become a de facto requirement for new data center approvals.

Whether those specific predictions materialize remains uncertain. But the direction of travel is becoming clearer.

As data centers become larger, more energy-intensive and more geographically concentrated, governments are under growing pressure to reconsider how these projects are approved and how their infrastructure costs are allocated.

The debate is therefore evolving from:

"Should this particular data center be built?"

to:

"What rules should govern data center development in the first place?"

That distinction matters.

A community may succeed in delaying one project, but the broader policy question remains unresolved: how should governments balance investment in AI and digital infrastructure against electricity demand, water scarcity, environmental impacts and residents' expectations about their neighborhoods?

The rules are changing.

But there is an important final complication: the data centers that have already been built — and the communities already living beside them — may not benefit from the protections created by those new rules.

That is likely to become one of the defining governance challenges of the AI infrastructure boom.